Hi,
It's nice to see a lot of familiar names on the forum. I have been absent for several months due to a very hectic life :-)
I need some advice... I have been using a Yamaha QY100 hardware sequencer for several years to lead music in our Sunday School class. It allows me to load MIDI "songs" from my PC and then play them through the interanal QY100 synth. It works very well and I have no complaints but I think I will soon lose the QY100... I'm changing churches. So... once again I am starting over with my music hardware.
I think I want to purchase a Ketron SD-2 and render my music tracks to CD format. I see no reason to use a hardware sequencer and synthesizer for live applications (non-keyboard sequencers are hard to find) unless I will loose quality when I render to audio. I have a good PC... several of you guys designed it :-) But I am concerned about the difficulty of managing dozen's of songs on CD's... do I put sets on a single CD?... one song per CD? ... is there a better format for this purpose?
What are your thoughts?
Gale
Hi Gale
I understand your situation as I'm in the same place.
For my needs I use a laptop with the excellent Vuplayer, which can be found at
http://www.vuplayer.com/As far as I'm concerned it has two great features - it supports midi and it has a mode where you can finish one song, advance to the next song and stop,waiting for the play button to be clicked. You can also build up separate play lists, e.g. week by week and you can even add songs to your play list while the present song is playing.
So no need to burn CDs or even rely on having a CD player at the venue - you are completely in control.
Tony
Just use RB to the SD2. You can load one song at a time or use the much improved Juke Box to set up sets
When I play out I use a laptop with mp3's. I've been using the karaoke player from WinAmp. As mentioned above you can set up play lists or do one at a time. I even set up time killers. The time killers are simply mp3's with silence in them. They give me anywhere from 5 seconds to 1 minute of quiet time so I can change an instrument or talk to my audience. You can load thousands of mp3's on a hard disc where you're limited for space using wave or seq files.
With the WinAmp karaoke you can have the words being played in front of you so you can see if the singers are into the right part of the song.
I am using a XP sp3 laptop with Echo Indigo IO card. For a player I use MediaPlayer.
A big plus for me is the easy way to make playlists and/or adding request songs on the fly using drag&drop. Another importand thing for me is the display of the total playing time of a playlist.
I have back-up for live-situations of all my backingtracks and some playlists on an iPod Touch. Should all else fail I can even fall back on MiniDisk.
I wouldn't rely on CD's for they scratch easily and the mechanics of the players allow for skipping during playback (much less then the old vinyl, but nevertheless......)
Ditto-use a laptop or if you don't have one get a small mp3 player and put your tunes on that.
Hi,
Thank you all very much… this is a wealth of information and I really appreciate it. I can see by your comments that I need a lap top… but for a while I will try get along with an old mini tower. I currently use a lap top for lyrics (displayed via video projector) but I have to give up the lap top too.
You have given me an idea… maybe I could use Karaoke files to display the lyrics and play the midi files at the same time? That would eliminate the need for a person to advance the lyrics. BTW - I have two or three weeks to “get my act together” before I move on to my new role… or current role in a new place. So I have some time to work on this and I may be allowed to borrow the QY100 for a couple of weeks if necessary to make the transition a little smoother.
Tony,
I think you are saying that you play midi files using VuPlayer .? Are you using an external hardware Synth like the SD-2 or a software synth on the lap top? I down loaded VuPlayer and I will experiment with it today.
Silvertones,
“Just use RB to the SD2.” … I am considering that very thing. I can purchase the SD-2 and RB in a bundle… definitely a possibility.
Russ,
I don’t have an MP3 player but I have seen 4Gbt models for as little as $35. Do you think something as inexpensive as that could work? My biggest concern is how they operate and whether I would be able to see the screen when I’m standing in front of a bunch of people. I will look into this further…
Mike,
Good point on the ability to see the playing time. I have to work the time out well in advance of when I am playing so I know how long my set will be. I suspect your sets are more spontaneous than mine :-) I am convinced that I don’t want to use CD’s… I would like to have a lap top configured like yours but I don’t think I can get Win XP anymore. That’s another concern I have… Vista!
Ed,
You summed it up well… I will experiment today with my old PC and see what I can do. But ultimately I think I want to get a lap top and an SD-2.
Thank’s again everyone for your comments… I will give you an update as I work through this.
Gale
I'm using an Archos Jukebox. I bought a rebuilt one for $180 to play mp3's. It has a 20gb hard drive. It's a little bigger than a standard mp3 player, but the buttons are on the outside and the screen is easy to read. I'm trying to get more info on using a Ketron SD2 as well. Good luck in your search
Stan
Gale,
I am waaaaayyy to lazy for all that rendering to wav and mp3. I just do my arranging in BIAB or RB, put songs in easy to find Biab folders on my laptop, connect via RCA to my, click play and off we go.
Later,
I use RB to play live and it does the lyrics and the chord scrolling for me. right now i do not have a SD2 so for the time i use Rolands TTS for midi playback, it sound a bit better than VSC, and i hve Jamstix for whatever drums i use other than RDs. I have three or four other VSTis that fill out needs.
I just ran thru a 25 song set for practice and never a hickup. Just allow it to fully load before hitting start.
Stan,
The Archos Jukebox is a very interesting device. I guess there are several different units but I found the MP3 player. Thank you for mentioning it... they even have a model that stores and plays MP3 and CD formatted files.
Danny,
I don't really want to render to CD or MP3... it's time consuming and you have to know what you are doing <LOL>. I have shared some of my tracks in CD format using VSC and the person liked them just fine. But I could tell that they needed some tweeking and I just didn't have time to figure out the details. So playing the MIDI files through a synth does sound like the way to go for me. The RB/SD-2 combination seems like the best approach for my needs.
Robh,
I have basically decided to do what you are doing but include the SD-2 right away since I don't have anything but VSC for the sounds. Now to work out the financing :-)
Gale
I use a laptop and mp3s.
I have a page dedicated to how I make the mp3s and how I use them on stage. It's the result of all I have learned doing this for years and playing music for a living.
It's a little long to post here, and so many people have already read it, so rather than duplicate it on this forum, I'll direct you to the page:
http://www.nortonmusic.com/backing_tracks.htmlNotes
I've been doing a theme park gig. Medium sized pa, I-pod and sax with wirless mic.
BB or pro-tracks makes it easy to make a file that I-tunes turns into its own file.
I-tunes is free for any computer. The only problem an I-pod, is that it will continue to play when your finished with the current song. So you have to be near your player when the song ends.
An I-pod will normally hold more songs than you'll ever use.EM
Thank you Notes... I will read through your material this afternoon. I can use all of the ideas I can get :-)
Thank you too Eddie... I asked my oldest daughtor if I could borrow her Ipod for an experiment. She was a little hesitent but agreed if I wouldn't "mess up" any of her music. I don't need to do anything to her music... just add a song of my own and lesten to it over the PA system. I probably won't go this route but I will check it out anyway.
Gale
I bought the new Cakewalk Music Creator 5 and it has TTS from Roland which is a far cry better than VSC, and sounds pretty solid so far, along with RTs and stuff.
Hi Guys,
I thought I would give you an update. Since talking to you last I have been leading the music in our new Church using MIDI files rendered to wav through the Roland VSC and then burned to CD. I have a CD player with a remote and I can with some difficulty start, stop and select the tracks I want to play. The difficulty is only in not being able to see what track I have selected but so far I haven't had any disasters :-) The results are ... well ... OK but nothing to get excited about. But this is only a temporary setup.
Last Thursday we purchased a complete sound system consisting of a Yamaha EMX 5014C mixer, Electrovoice SX-100 speakers and Electrovoice RE410 mics. We also have all of the other commonly associated items... snake, cables and stands. Our next purchase will be an SD-1. I plan to play MIDI files using a lap top and the SD-1. That is my preference right now because it is quick and easy and the results are very good. When I render to wav I am finding that I often need to edit the MIDI file or the wav file to get a sound comparable to the original MIDI played live through a synthesizer (QY100 in my case). Some time in the next few weeks we will purchase two spot monitors and an SD-1. I'll let you know how this all works out.
I just thought I would let you know that I am really doing something and your comments were not wasted. :-)
Gale
This is an interesting item - pity speakers are so small !
Memorex MKS-SS1 SingStand Home Karaoke System .
Can be found on Amazon.
Hi Gale. When we started, we used a magnavox boom box with the remote play .wav files only. The volume was just slightly week for our church so we bought the Roland Cube and that fixed things. Sometimes, the wrong song played or whatever, because I pushed the wrong buttons. The ipod didn't stop after the song and the pressure sensitive buttons were too touchy for me when I had to move quickly in front of an audience. The Archos has the buttons on the outside and they are big enough to use easily. You can see the song in the display window and select it in advance. Prior to using BIAB, I was converting midi files to wave using software from ManiacTools. I think I paid $29 for the download. I still use it if I have a midi file and don't run it through biab. I can import it into Sibelius and save it running it through the SD2 as a midi file. As you've read, there are lots of different ways to get the music out there. If I had to cart lots of equipment around for larger venues, I would probably do like some and just have a dedicated laptop for performances, FWIW. I sure appreciate all the folks here sharing their ideas.
Stan
Netbooks here run for 299 to 350. I run band in a box from the portable hard drive to the netbook. Can run either way, make the files as mp3s and play them or just use band in a box.
You can spend $100 on a good player, but in the end that is all you have. With the netbook you can yank it out of your backpack and have a full blown computer. And they come with xp (linux too).
Gale, since you mentioned using a remote control with your CD, this is what I use for performance with backing tracks:
I use a digital recorder (the M-Audio Microtrak) which plays Mp3s and Wave files (better quality, no converting). It has RCA jack outputs for a 40-foot cord from Radio Shack to go back to the soundboard wherever I play. Two adapters to 1/4" jacks on the soundboard end is all it needs. That way, I'm not at the mercy of the (often unskilled) sound person, and I can see, load, play, adjust volume and stop the songs easily on the handheld unit.
Hi Matt. If our used Archos konks out, we're getting an HD2. We'll just have to remeber to pickup out feet if we use a long chord.
Stan